


It Wasn't Like Me (To Move Closer To You)

by AriaJoie



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Consensual Intimacy While Tipsy, Drinking, Fluff, M/M, Makeouts, New Relationship, tipsy flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:15:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25890454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriaJoie/pseuds/AriaJoie
Summary: “Maybe if we could just win a couple sets,” Ukai says after a while. “I don’t want to put this on the kids, but it might help.”Takeda replies without taking his half-closed eyes off the sky. “It might, but I promise they like you already. How could they not, you’re great.”-The various coaches and staff like to carouse a little at the end of the night during the summer training camp, and when Takeda notices Ukai's reluctance to join in, it leads to them both working through some feelings.
Relationships: Takeda Ittetsu/Ukai Keishin
Comments: 7
Kudos: 200





	It Wasn't Like Me (To Move Closer To You)

The air is cool now that the sun is down, and Tokyo is quieter under the stars than during the day, even if it’s still louder than back home. Takeda is jabbering as he walks towards the school with Ukai, beer warming his cheeks, the lingering energy from the bar keeping his eyes open this late. He’s happily going on about a story from college that something Saeko had said had reminded him of, changing topics every minute, barely even watching where they’re going as he talks to the air, when it strikes Takeda, mid sentence, that Ukai hasn’t said anything in some time.

“Everything okay?” he asks, cutting himself off.

Ukai starts a little. “Y-yeah, I’m fine. Just a long day.”

Takeda takes a better look at him, swerving dangerously close in the process.

Ukai rears back slightly, trying to avoid a collision, but can’t help it as he starts to smile and laugh at the earnest worry in Takeda’s face. 

“I promise I’m okay,” he says, putting a hand on Takeda’s shoulder. “I’ll get some sleep, be good as new tomorrow.”

Takeda studies him for a moment, all serious faced, before switching on a beaming smile. “Okay.”

He’s not totally sure he believes it, but Ukai seems to have stepped out of his funk and that’s enough for him to drop it for tonight. They swap stories about stupid things they did when they were twenty for the rest of the walk, and by they time they split off to their separate rooms, they’re both smiling warmly, and Takeda’s just about forgotten anything had been wrong. Still, it takes him an extra minute to drift off, one last picture of Ukai’s quiet frown crossing his mind before sleep takes him.

—-

The next night, Takeda picks it up faster, noticing while they’re still at the bar that Ukai isn’t saying much, mostly nursing his beer and watching the clock. He doesn’t bring it up, but he does start to formulate a plan, though two beers in it’s already getting difficult to get past step three.

As they all start to file out for the night, Takeda makes an attempt at an excuse to pull Ukai to the side. “Oh! Ukai, I need to check something, come with me,” he says, and starts to walk away without waiting for a response.

It’s not really phrased as a question, and Ukai opens his mouth to ask what’s up, but just shrugs, waves to everyone else, and follows along. 

They walk together for several minutes in peaceful silence. Takeda starts leading them down the street away from the school, but tries to think on his feet and swings them around towards the back, up the big hill behind the gyms.

It turns out he’s overestimated their ability to climb a steep hill while tipsy, and they end up sprawled out on the grass, gently damp and cool with dew, halfway up the hill. 

They both lay there, catching their breath for a minute, before Ukai asks, “Is this what you needed to come check on?”

“Oh! No, I needed to check on you,” Takeda tells him, letting his head roll to the side to look at him.

Ukai lets his head roll also, looking right back. “I- What?”

“Well you weren’t really talking and I was worried.”

“O-oh, no I’m fine.”

Takeda just stares at him, waiting. Eventually, Ukai drops his gaze and opens his mouth a few times before he starts talking.

“Maybe I feel. Sorta. Out of place.”

Takeda’s brow scrunches, brain trying to work something out. “But you’re a coach.”

“Well, yeah, but,” Ukai sighs and looks up at the sky, “these guys have all been doing this for so long, and they all kind of think I’m my grandpa, and I’m the youngest one in the room-“

Takeda laughs gently at that and Ukai pauses.

“What?”

“We’re like the same age. I’m not even 30.”

“Well, yeah I guess.” 

Ukai is glancing at him, and he’s glancing back, smiling. He thinks for a moment Ukai is going to say something else, but instead he just sighs deeply and stares at the stars. Takeda puts his hands under his head and looks up too, debating quietly how important it actually is to make it back to his bed before falling asleep.

“Maybe if we could just win a couple sets,” Ukai says after a while. “I don’t want to put this on the kids, but it might help.”

Takeda replies without taking his half-closed eyes off the sky. “It might, but I promise they like you already. How could they not, you’re great.”

Ukai doesn’t respond, and Takeda starts to worry. When he turns to look, though, Ukai is staring at him, a little smile playing at the corner of his mouth, his lips just barely parted. Takeda stares right back, feeling a gentle heat build in his cheeks. 

Eventually words start to bubble up in his chest, the kind that run through his mind sometimes as he’s eating dinner by himself or falling asleep alone in his little apartment, the kind he’s careful to keep tamped down unless Ukai is out of the room. He briefly think he might say them out loud, but instead he sits up, wipes the dew out of his hair, and says, “Okay. Bedtime. Thank you for helping me check on what I needed to check on.”

Ukai sits up next to him, laughs, yawns. Takeda tries not to stare as he stretches. “Thanks for bringing me along.”

They walk back to their rooms accompanied by a comfortable silence, and wish each other goodnight in the hallway. 

Takeda sleeps better that night, and as he fades out, he hopes Ukai does as well.

—-

Takeda isn’t quite sure how they got on the topic, but he does know that Saeko is leaning halfway across the table at him, waiting to hear if he has “anyone special” in his life, and that he cannot, under any circumstances, look to his left right now. The coaches have quieted down and are watching him closely over the rims of their glasses, hiding their smiles, and he desperately wants to know if Ukai is looking at him too, but his whole left arm and cheek are prickling where he’s confident Ukai is looking at him, and if Saeko smells that blood in the water, he’ll never survive the rest of the week.

“Ah, well, you know, I’m, um, still looking, I guess,” he stammers out eventually, rubbing the back of his head, grinning in a way he hopes looks innocent.

Saeko looks him over with an appraising eye, somewhat disbelieving. “You’re sure you’re just looking?” she asks.

He tries desperately to say something, fumbling over himself. The coaches have started cracking, hiding guffaws with sips of beer and sliding over good spirited comments about “how busy his weekends must be” and how he’s “gotta settle down eventually.” It’s not helping his tongue, and neither is his third beer.

All of a sudden, he feels a hand on the back of his shoulder, and Ukai speaks up next to him. 

“Let him live, Saeko. How many girls did you have to disappoint to come along this week?”

“Two!” she says proudly, taking a swig, her attention already drifting away from the subject.

As the chatter returns to normal, Takeda turns to Ukai and gives him the most grateful smile he can muster. It’s then he notices Ukai’s hand is still on his back. It’s warm, and solid, full of confidence, even in such a small gesture. 

Ukai smiles back and nods, let’s his hand drift off his shoulder after just a moment longer than he needs to wait.

As they’re leaving, Ukai nods his head towards the way they’d walked the night before, eyebrow raised, so Takeda says goodnight to the rest and, despite a questioning look from Saeko, off they go again.

It’s nice, this little walk. The air is brisk compared to the bar and it cools his drink-warmed cheeks. There’s a stillness to the open air, the empty street, and Takeda can almost pretend it’s sobering him up.

They walk back to the hill without talking about it and sit down next to each other, closer to the bottom than the night before, knees bent, arms not quite touching. 

“Thanks,” Takeda says simply after a moment.

Ukai smiles. “I couldn’t just let her eat you alive like that.”

Takeda groans and flops onto his back, arms splayed out. Ukai laughs kindly and looks over his shoulder at him. 

“So, uh, is there anyone?” 

Takeda almost chokes on nothing. They’re making eye contact, and he knows he’s turning bright red, he just hopes the darkness kind of hides it.

“I- I mean,” he sits back up, “kind of. Someone I’m interested in. Not someone I’m with.”

“Ah, I gotcha.” Ukai turns to look up at the night sky. “They’d be lucky to have you, whoever it is.”

God, he’s so hard to read sometimes. Takeda is staring at him, but his eyes are locked on the sky. He might be smiling? It’s hard to tell out here, the gym lights off, just distant downtown lights reflecting off the sky.

“Keishin,” Takeda says.

Ukai looks at him.

He leans forward, closes his eyes, his last drink making him just bold enough, and kisses him, hands planted awkwardly on the slope, slightly misjudging the distance, but on the lips nonetheless.

There’s a moment of sheer terror, and then Ukai’s hand finds his cheek and he’s kissing him back and Takeda just about melts, ready to mix with the dew and slip down the hill. 

Forever later they pull apart, Ukai’s hand still on his cheek, both of them breathless and smiling, a little bewildered. 

Takeda feels like he should say something, but his cheeks are too warm and he can’t stop smiling. Ukai is smiling back at him, bigger than he’s ever seen, and Takeda can feel his heart swelling in a way it’s never really done before.

Ukai comes on first for the second kiss, and after that it’s kind of hard to keep track, lying sideways in the grass, cold on his side but so warm to his front. 

He thinks they might have spent a year like that when they finally sit up, Ukai’s hand resting comfortably in his own.

“‘Nother big day tomorrow,” Ukai says.

“Should get some sleep,” Takeda agrees.

Neither one moves for a second, and then they both laugh, and Ukai stands, helping him up after. 

They hold hands as they walk back to their rooms, and it feels nice, natural, like this is barely an extension of all the time they were already spending together. 

When they get to their rooms, they hesitate for just a moment, just long enough for them to both know they’re both thinking it, before hugging goodnight and going their separate ways. 

Takeda spends the whole time he’s changing and brushing his teeth wondering how he’ll ever sleep again, feeling like this, and then his head hits his pillow and the eighteen hour days and four beers make themselves known, and he’s out while his eyes are still closing.

—-

The next day is forever long. Not quite real. It’s not that they’re not paying attention to the games, they are, but it feels like Takeda catches Ukai looking at him every fifteen minutes, and the only reason it isn’t more often is that Ukai keeps catching him too. 

The thing that finally pulls them back to themselves is the boys’ first win of the week. Takeda jumps to his feet as the ball drops for the last time, and as the team celebrates on the court, Ukai shoots him a smile that makes his heart melt down to his shoes.

After that, they’re focused. Wins had felt possible, near even, but a taste of success has the whole team, including them, hungry for more. The energy they’d all felt at the Interhigh comes flooding back, and while Takeda and Ukai are even more focused on the games, there’s an electricity between them, crackling every time their shoulders brush on the bench.

They end the day 3 – Too-Many-To-Count, but that’s three more than they’d had the rest of the week, and even after they’ve debriefed and dismissed the kids to individual practice, they keep chattering the entire way to the bar. As the night goes on, the others pull them apart to actually socialize occasionally, but they can’t help drifting back together, analyzing sets and serves, planning training routines, talking through team morale. 

Eventually, the others get up to leave for the night, and they automatically stand to follow, hastily emptying their glasses before belatedly tagging along. They all walk back to their rooms, Ukai and Takeda trailing behind, paying more attention to messily scribbled notes on napkins than their own feet. Neither notices as the others peel off, and eventually, they find themselves standing in the hallway outside Ukai’s room, still talking strategy, diagrams and notes barely visible in the moonlight rolling in through the windows.

It’s in a natural pause in the conversation that Takeda realizes they’re alone. Well, he’d sort of noticed before then, but hadn’t really considered the part where it means he could maybe actually kiss Ukai again without Saeko exploding. 

He can’t stop thinking how beautiful Ukai is. Maybe it’s the beer. He looks so relaxed as he shuffles through his notes (napkins), smiling gently to himself, a glint of moonlight in his eyes. It’s definitely not just the beer. Takeda knows he’s staring, but he’s okay with it. 

Eventually, Ukai looks up and meets his eye, whatever he was going to say frozen on his half-open lips. As Takeda watches, a glint of something other than the light enters his eyes, and his cheeks take on a gentle flush.

“Hey, um, would you want to- I mean it’s- I get it if not. Do you want to come in?” Ukai asks.

It takes Takeda a second to swallow his nerves, even if it’s exactly what he’s been hoping to hear. “Yes. Please.”

Takeda’s not sure he’s ever seen Ukai nervous like this, but he can also feel his own face trying to work out a dozen different emotions, so it’s not too surprising. 

They walk in and turn the lights on, and immediately run out of momentum. The rooms are tiny, nowhere really for two people to sit besides the futon, and apparently neither of them is feeling quite that brave yet.

Takeda is almost ready to excuse himself back to his own room, flashing vividly back to his first time going home with another guy his first year of college, when he’d walked in and immediately done just that, when Ukai reaches out and takes his hand. 

“Um, I don’t really do this very often. And I’m sorry if I’m messing it up. But, I’m still glad for last night. Y‘know, whatever tonight is,” Ukai tells him. 

They’re both trying to look each other in the eye and only sort of succeeding, so at least Takeda knows he’s not the only nervous one.

“I am too,” he replies, “and- and maybe we could just start with that again?”

Ukai smiles at him, and Takeda’s heart does a flip. 

“Yeah.”

Ukai isn’t that much bigger than him, but his arms feel firm and secure around Takeda as they come together. It makes him just a little bit dizzy to look up at Ukai from here, bodies tentatively touching, cigarette smoke and sweat and a hint of cologne like warm whiskey mingling in the air. 

They kiss, and a few moments later Takeda vaguely registers surprise at himself as he backs Ukai up to a wall, earning a small sound of satisfaction from him as a reward. His arms slide up around Ukai’s neck, whose own hands find their way down to Takeda’s waist, his hips. Time melts away for a moment, but after Ukai has to awkwardly scoot himself back up the wall for the second time, they pause and smile awkwardly at each other.

“Wanna . . .” Ukai trails, glancing at the bed, somehow flushing deeper.

“Please,” Takeda says, voice gone husky. 

There’s a brief adjustment period where neither of them is quite sure where their arms go, or how on top of each other is the right amount of on top of each other, but they sort it out in the end and before long they’re both shirtless and out of breath and lost to the world.

—-

Takeda’s mind races as he’s woken by someone else’s alarm the next morning, head not on his own pillow. It all comes rushing back to him very quickly though when his pillow shifts and grumbles under him, revealing itself to be the crook of Ukai’s shoulder. 

Ukai sleepily kisses him on the head before reaching over to his phone to quiet it. Takeda stretches and yawns, rubbing the sleep from his eyes before looking up to meet Ukai’s drowsy smile with his own. Even now it’s a gentle surprise, getting that look from him. He hopes he’ll have the chance to get used to it.

They let themselves have a minute like that, still tangled together, kissing and murmuring to each other, but eventually the day calls and Takeda has to put last night’s clothes back on and make his way first to his own room and then to breakfast with the team.

Still, it’s not like they’re ever far apart. They’re less antsy than the day before, more sure in the things they sorted out last night.

Ukai had asked him as they were falling asleep, “Is this just ‘cause we’re here?”

The worry in his voice had caught Takeda off guard, and he’d pulled himself out of his half sleep enough to kiss him long and deep. “No.” 

He’d watched a shy grin break across Ukai’s face, and they’d held each other close as they’d fallen asleep.

That feeling fades as the day goes on, but never really disappears, a gentle, reassuring glow in Takeda’s chest. It’s there as they coach the boys, as they relax with the other coaches at the cookout, as they chat quietly while Takeda drives the bus home. It’s there as they kiss, very briefly, goodbye, as Takeda goes home, falls asleep in his own bed. 

He’s worried at first that he’ll lose it, that warm glow he finally found in Tokyo. He seems to lose track of it the first day back at school, teaching, grading, the routine coming back to him, normalcy returning to his life. The worry is unfounded though. As soon as he steps into the gym after school that day, all the familiar sights and sounds and smells coming back to him, he knows he still has it, and when Ukai smiles at him from across the room, he knows he’s not the only one.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Never Feel Alone by The Dangerous Summer.


End file.
